Artistic Practices

Ecology and cybernetics towards network society capitalism

This post comes to you from Cultura21

HKW_LogoJune 21-22nd,2013, The World Earth – Conference, in Berlin

The exhibition and the conference The Whole Earth are dedicated to the story of the image of the “blue planet”. The project takes its starting point in historical developments in California since the 1960s : using materials from cultural history and artistic works. Curated by Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, the exhibition will critically explore the application of ecological-systemic concepts to society, politics, and aesthetics.

The conference will revolve around questions of the legacy of the California counterculture. Roundtable discussions will explore the historical sources of, and connections between, discursive and political issues such as the ecological movement, cybernetics, anti-conformist cultures, new artistic practices that dissolve boundaries, and the transformations in these areas right up to the globalist network capitalism of the 1990s.

For more information about the program :www.hkw.de/en/programm/2013/the_whole_earth/veranstaltungen_83124/veranstaltungsdetail_88180.php

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots

This post comes to you from Cultura21

September 22, 2012–January 20, 2013

Guest curated by Sue Spaid and opening September 22, 2012, Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots addresses farming as both activism and art form. Featuring a real working farm within the gallery, a farm stand in the museum lobby, sculptures used for farming, videos and other installations, as well as multiple satellite projects in the community, Green Acres presents farming as art through a wide variety of approaches.

The show is presented in five sections:

  • Farming Awareness explores how artists have alerted food consumers to the significance of food production.
  • Innovative Farming Strategies surveys artistic practices that have contributed to the development of inventive farming techniques.
  • Community Farming/Farming Communities juxtaposes “community farming”—farms organized by artists for constituents—with “farming communities”—farms implemented by artist-farmers with the public.
  • Biodiversity presents a cause important to the artist-farmer as artists have consistently considered their efforts in stark contrast to the industrial type of monoculture-farming.
  • Farming Mysticism shows artists offering blessings, rituals and other esoteric approaches that highlight emotional connections between people and the earth, as well as the historical pairing of spiritualism and farming.

Artists include: Kim Abeles, Agnes Denes, Dan Devine, Field Faring, Futurefarmers, Anya Gallaccio, Avital Geva, Lonnie Graham, Harrison Studio, Mei Ling Hom, Homeadow Song Farm, Patricia Johanson, Sakarin Krue-On, J. J. McCracken, Matthew Moore, N55, Permaganic Eco Garden, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Mara Scrupe, Bonnie Ora Sherk, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Tatfoo Tan, Shannon Young

You can find more information at http://contemporaryartscenter.org/

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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State of the Arts gets the environment

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes: 

At the most recent State of the Arts (SOTA) conference hosted by Arts Council England in Salford had, for the first time, two sessions on ‘Artists and our future environment’, with speakers James Marriott from PLATFORM; the writer Jay Griffiths; Mojisola Adebayo, writer, performer, director; and Andy Field, co-director of Forest Fringe.

All of SOTA’s sessions – on the creative economy, changing society, imagination, fundraising – touch on environmental themes. But these two drew out specific questions of the relations between artists and environments, of the material effects of artistic practices on the Earth, and of the importance of artistic expression of environmental themes.

This interest by SOTA in the environment comes about, in part, from talks between ACE London and arts organisations with an environmental focus in the London region – organisations who had lost their Regularly Funded Organisation status, and questioned ACE’s policies on the environment and climate.

James Marriott’s session, transcribed on the PLATFORM blog, sets out how this collaboration between disparate organisations has worked, and how substantial shifts in ACE’s environmental directions are taking shape.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Extension of the Call for Papers – Sociology of the Arts – Artistic Practices

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Two months ago we published on our website a call for papers for the next conference of the Research Network Sociology of the Arts, at the European Sociological Association, which will take place in Vienna from 5 to 8 September 2012. The focus of the conference will be on artistic practices. The call for papers is open, not only to sociologists, but also to interdisciplinary researchers from diverse backgrounds.

Many people interested in the conference have asked for the call for papers to be extended. This has been agreed, so the new deadline will be the 19 February 2012.

To look back into our post from November 4th 2011, about the call for papers, please click here.

For more information on the conference please also visit the conference website at: http://www.mdw.ac.at/ESA-Arts-2012

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Sociology of the Arts – Artistic Practices

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Vienna

5th to 8th of September 2012

Call for Papers: The 7th Conference of the Research Network Sociology of the Arts, which is part of the European Sociological Association (ESA), takes place from the 5th to the 8th of September 2012 in Vienna, Austria. The conference will be organised by the Institute for Music Sociology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and is an event in a biannual rhythm since 2000. The key aim of these conferences is to enable collaboration and scholarly exchange between art sociologists and other scholars of the arts, and to support the presentation of new research projects. Furthermore, inspiration for the further development of the sociology of the arts can be seen as a goal.

The invited four key speakers, Karlheinz Essl (composer), Nathalie Heinich (sociologist), Theodore Schatzki (philosopher) and Laurent Thévenot (sociologist) will focus their speeches on artistic practices. The conference welcomes participants and papers on all core areas of arts sociology.  (Please find the PDF file of the call for papers at the bottom of this post.)
Experienced as well as young scholars from various disciplines sensitive to social inquiries into the arts are invited to participate in the conference. Their presentations can be related to following fields:

  1. Sociology focused on particular domains in arts including architecture, urban planning, applied arts, arts within the domain of popular culture (e.g. film, television, and popular music) as well as traditional ‘high’ arts (e.g. music, visual arts, literature, theatre, etc.).
  2. The process of production, distribution, promotion and commercialisation of works of art including the impact of technology, new means of production, forms of collaboration, the formation of art theory, the development of arts markets, process of valuation etc.
  3. The process of presentation and mediation of arts including art criticism and publicity in all domains of the arts, museums, theatres, concerts, audience studies, attitudes towards the audience, educational programs, etc.
  4. Professional development including amateurs and semi-amateurs, vocational education, art schools, professional differentiation, artistic income, artistic reputation, relation to arts management, etc.
  5. Arts organisations (not only houses such as museums, theatres but also festivals and artists’ unions) – investigation of historical development, power relations, effects, program selection, processes within the organisations such as gate-keeping, leadership, etc.
  6. Arts policy (especially the sociological aspects thereof) including legal issues, public and private funding, public discourse and debates (e.g. classification of art, arts and religious symbols, arts and sexuality, arts and racism), censorship, analysis of the impact of arts, sustainability, lobbying associations, cultural ministries or other government bodies.
  7. Social and cognitive effects of the arts including:  arts and identity formation, arts and bodies, aesthetic experience, arts and ethics, coding and decoding, gender related practices, ethnographic aspects, art for social transformation, arts in communities and arts as a part of urban culture.
  8. Arts from a macrosociological perspective including: (de-)institutionalisation, economisation, globalisation vs. localism, digitalisation, mediamorphosis, arts and social cohesion, arts and ethics, arts and hegemony and arts and power.
  9. Theoretical development in arts sociology such as the production of culture approach, (post-) structuralism, field theory, system theory, praxeology as well as methodological issues.

The deadline for submission is the 31st of January 2012.
Further information on the conference and about the application details can be found on the conference website.

The call for papers can be downloaded as PDF file here:

Call for Papers, Vienna 5-8 Sept.2012, ESA-RN02

For further details on the conference please contact zembylas [at] mdw [dot] ac [dot] at or tel. +43-1-71155-3617.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Symposium: “Animal Ecologies in Visual Culture”

This post comes to you from Cultura21

By Ronja Röckemann

Reposted from: www.antennae.org.uk/Symposium

The symposium on October 8th 2011 at University College London proposes an exploration of artistic practices involved with animals and environments. In the recent re-surfacing of the animal in contemporary art, emphasis has been given to mammals, mainly because of the most immediate relational opportunities that these animals offer to us. However, a number of very interesting artists has been recently trying to bridge the abyss between ‘us’ and more ‘taxonomically remote’ creatures through the use of art and science as active interfaces. This new focus reveals the interconnectedness between humans, amphibians, reptiles and insects, and the environments in which we all live. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the symposium aims at facilitating a dialogue between artists, scientists and academics interested in informing wider audiences through visual communication.

Speakers Include: Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey / Ron Broglio / Maja and Reuben Fowkes /Rikke Hansen / London Fieldworks / Joyce Salisbury / Linda Williams. See www.antennae.org.uk for registration.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)

– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)

– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)

– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

utopia project 2010: info

“Utopia project” is an annual summer workshop organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts in Rethymno Crete.”

Athens School of Fine Arts

Organizers-Facilitators:

V. Vlastaras, artist, Lecturer, ASFA and M. Glyka, visual artist, teacher BA & MA Vakalo college of Art and Design.

Basic timetable:

4 July: arrivals

5 July – 7 July: artists presentations

8 – 20 July: preparation of the work

21-23 July: show and presentations of final works

24 July: end of show – departures

Number of participants: 14

In collaboration with:

Mr. Gary Woodley, artist and lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

Mr. Klaas Hoek, artist, head of the postgraduate department of University of Utrecht and head of the printmaking of the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

This year project:

UTOPIA & NATURE

Based on H.D. Thoreau’s “Walden

EXPERIMENTATION AND RESEARCH IN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC PRACTICES

General Information

Program

Athens School of Fine Arts offers an annual summer residency program under the title Utopia Project for postgraduate or recent graduates artists who intend to collaborate with experienced artists, theorists and political scientists in order to explore, under a different every year theme, artistic practices and theoretical approaches in the contemporary society.

Participants join the project in workshops, lectures, group and individual tutorials and critiques and leave the residency with input on new project plans organized accordingly each year’s theme. Artists attend the program to get a creative surge, get a fresh perspective on their work, revitalize their practice, take their work in a new direction, make plans for a focused praxis and to become part of an international community of artists, theorists and curators.

History

Utopia Project has started by the initiative of two artists. Vassilis Vlastaras, visual artist and lecturer in the Athens School of Fine Arts and Maria Glyka, visual artist and teacher in the Ba and Ma Program of Vakalo College of Art and Design. The workshop is organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts and it is taking part every July in the Asfa annex in Rethymno Crete. The first Utopia Project was held in 2006 in Rethymno under the title “Utopia as an Island” with an international body of 15 participants, guests and faculty. That was followed by “Utopia and Violence” in 2007, “Utopia and Praxis: May68-May08” in 2008, “Utopia and Youth” in 2009. This year it runs under the title “Utopia and Nature, based on H.D. Thoreau’s “Walden”. By now the whole body of participants guests artists, theorists counts over the number of eighty people.

Goals

In this a-disciplinary program, students are free to pursue work in any art-related genre and to create their own course of study, working independently and with the support of the the coordinating and guest artists and theorists.

Purpose

The workshop is intended to lift the boundaries between fine arts, traditional and new media, artists and theorists. It aims to create a space for participants of all disciplines to interact with a wide range of artists, scientists, theorists, media practitioners and visionaries and provoke them to investigate their work independently and transdisciplinarily in both a cultural and studio context according to the year’s subject.

Location

Utopia Project is an international program organized by Asfa. The residencies take place in the annex of Asfa in Rethyno Crete every July for about 20 days. Asfa provides a range of accommodation listings and arranges a special group rate at a student hotel each summer as well as student travel and city guides.

Participants make their own arrangements for travel from their country of origin to Crete. Nevertheless accommodation in shared rooms, basic meals and basic materials are provided by Asfa. The annex is uniquely placed on the top of Evligias Hill in Rethymno, 15 min walk from the center of the old historical town. Daily bus schedule links Rethymno to the airports of Chania and Heraklio.

Language

The whole part of the workshop takes place in English. Many languages are spoken but talks, critiques and lectures all take place in English. Participants must have a good command of spoken English.

Facilities, Equipment and Resources

Inside and outside working spaces for making or install art work, workshop and computer stations with scanner and printer and WiFi access fulfill the residency needs.

Achievement

Each year, artists create art projects (paintings, film or videos, installations, performances, photographs, etc. Participants’ exhibit or present documentation of their final art and research projects in the exhibition space inside the site.  Through discussions they gain the critical, technological, and aesthetic experiences from the guest artists and theorists. The last week beside concluding their final personal work they are expected to take part on the organization and realization of a small publication that presents the group’s idea of each year’s subject.

Community Alumni

Past years’ participants continue to take part in residencies by giving and receiving critiques, exhibiting, as program advisors, and as guests of the Utopia Project.

via utopia project 2010: info.